15

Two days have passed since Bonny and Dorondera leapt overboard into the sea. Bonny, his forehead swollen but no longer bleeding, faces the southeast, the new direction of travel, down towards Neuseeland.

One of the wallabies is dead, and Louis, whom Bonny calls Mr Müller, has pinned out its skin to dry. ‘It will be made into a second cape for Dorondera,’ Louis said. The creature’s skeleton has been strapped to the bow of the ship to dry in the salt and the sun and will be traded for money in Germany.

Can-o-bie blows the gentlest breeze, soothing the wound on Bonny’s face. Dolphins dart through the ocean, their silver contours visible underwater as they orbit the ship, no sooner arcing away than being drawn back to its mammoth sides. Moments later a turtle, a mi’bir, surfaces to draw breath. I wonder if it is Beeral’s way of providing encouragement, to send a turtle. The mi’bir is Jurano’s totem and he watches the creature keenly. He smiles.

Bonny looks at Louis. ‘You still have not shown me where Hilda and Dorondera are sleeping. Minyang-gu?’ he asks. Why? ‘Is it not safe? Can you take me there now?’ He is speaking in Badtjala more quickly than he usually talks to Louis, as if distracted by fear. Normally, if he is not speaking in English or his basic German, he slows down and articulates carefully.

Louis takes a moment to answer, silently mouthing the key words as he deciphers them.

‘They in own place,’ Louis answers in Badtjala.

‘Some men here are not respectful,’ Bonny warns, again in his own language, keeping the conversation private. ‘We must keep the women safe.’

‘I sleep close. Not worry,’ Louis replies.

Bonny reaches into his pocket for the cowrie shell and his Jun Jaree.

The sea grows deeper and darker and, in places, lighter again. There is a mountainous island. There, below the surface, are many corals and fish, more colourful than seem possible, even to a ghost. I once thought ghosts knew everything, could see every possibility, but this is not true. Even now I am still learning to see and to listen, with these new eyes that are not eyes and ears that are not ears.

Bonny draws illustrations of the new types of fish and speaks aloud an imagined tale that will allow him to remember this journey. He asks forgiveness from the spirits of this new place for the errors he says he will inevitably make, for he does not know its people and has no choice but to invent:

Beyond the beautiful land known as K’gari, another spirit was at work creating a vast sea containing water from all the rivers of every land. Back in the First Time, these rivers were snakes which had broken laws and been cast away from their homes on the land. They slid towards the sea, cutting great grooves, and once they were safely away, they laid their eggs. Those eggs became islands. It was all so beautiful that the great spirit cried and the sea grew even larger with the tears.

Bonny dots the songline with placenames, learned from Louis, English and German words, which sound strange in an Aboriginal story, but that is how it is. It is all he has, and he needs to remember somehow. This newest addition is ‘Lord Howe Island’, a place the ship stops to take on board seeds sold by other whites. The seeds will grow into ‘palms’ that Louis tells Bonny the whites like to grow inside their houses.

‘Inside?’ Bonny asks.

‘Ja,’ Louis says. ‘They take some soil in a container and grow the plant inside their homes.’

Bonny laughs at the idea.

He recites to Hans a list of all the places they have travelled and teaches the Dutchman Badtjala dances. I take my ghostly place on the ship’s deck with the men and watch Hans’s face, as open with wonder as a child’s, as Bonny performs for him, ochre-chested in the moonlight. Bonny stomps hard on the deck and Hans rises to his feet and copies him. Jurano teaches Hans what he knows of the stars.

Later, I follow the Dutchman to his cabin and lean over his shoulder as he draws diagrams in his book of the dances, along with maps of the constellations. He lifts a scarf around his neck and records the stories that Jurano was willing to teach him. He writes long lists of Badtjala words. He says them aloud and, in time, becomes reasonably good at speaking them.

The ship sails on and Bonny makes marks on his boomerang to record the passing of time – four days now. Occasionally the ship passes another vessel and aboard it are more whites. Bonny asks Louis how many of them there are, these white-skinned people who are like a swarm of insects multiplying in the heat.